Word: kachina
(lookup in dictionary)
(lookup stats)
Dates: during 1990-1999
Sort By: most recent first
(reverse)
...spend the day with him but don't show up until 8 get voice-mail messages from the Senator. "Hope I'm not disturbing your sleep, you lazy bastard!" In Phoenix on Monday morning, he darts around the house, from room to room, pointing to his collection of Hopi kachina dolls or the autographed boxing gloves from Evander Holyfield. Every surface in the living areas of the house, horizontal and vertical, is covered with something--photographs or plaques; framed programs from the 1992 christening of the U.S.S. John S. McCain, a guided-missile destroyer named after both his father...
...avoid writing about the kachina religion because they have a theology and philosophy that requires secrecy," Hillerman says. "Knowledge of the uninitiated ruins the power." When faced with a scene in which a character would participate in the ceremony, Hillerman finds an outside narrator. That narrator "doesn't see hardly any of it because I don't want to be wrong." But he admits, "even then you make a mistake." Describing a time when he placed a ceremony outdoors instead of inside a hogan, he approaches it philosophically, accepting the purist's criticism...
...images are obvious: sun, moon, animals, plants such as squash blossoms. But just as surely as in 17th century Dutch painting, every object is a symbol too. Like Native Americans themselves, jewelry fanciers feel power in a massive Navajo turquoise bracelet, transcendence in a kachina, or spirit, figure. The entire craft is devoted to good luck...
...embarrassing incidents became less frequent but did not end. In February 1990, Lujan visited New Mexico's Petroglyph National Monument. There he stunned local officials gathered around the centuries-old "Dancing Kachina Petroglyph" when he bent down beside an adjacent rock and scratched it with a knife. The Secretary was asked to refrain. Lujan explains the incident without a trace of embarrassment: "There was this whole discussion going on, which I knew was not correct, about how hard the rock was, that there must have been enormously sharp instruments to make these petroglyphs. I just took out my knife...
OBJECTS OF MYTH AND MEMORY, AMERICAN INDIAN ART AT THE BROOKLYN MUSEUM, New York City. A rich and vibrant collection of some 250 Western and Plains Indian objects, including polychromed ceramics, kachina dolls, God-impersonator masks and fetishes that were acquired by the museum's insightful turn-of-the-century curator. Through...